Free Dark Target by David DeBatto Page A

for the Mars program? I’m asking because maybe she had something she thought you could use.”
    “It is for the Mars program,” she said. “My work is primarily designing toward a Mars mission in 2008.”
    “In what way?”
    “We go into places like the caves at Lechugilla or Carlsbad or the thermal vents at the bottom of the ocean and look at the
     life forms we find there. Non-carbon based. Chemosynthetic. Things that don’t fit the usual definitions, so if they don’t
     fit our definition of life, then what definitions do they fit? How do we distinguish between life and nonlife, and how do
     you build a machine that can do that? We know that at one time, Mars had water, so if some of that water was trapped underground,
     in aquifers and in caves, where ultraviolet radiation can’t reach, then that’s where we might find life.”
    “I wonder if Cheryl Escavedo was interested in that,” DeLuca said. “Is there any overlap between what you’re working on and
     what they might be doing at Space Command?”
    “Overlap?” she asked. “Well, I’m sure there are people at Cheyenne or Kirtland who would love it if we did find life on Mars
     and they could turn it into a weapon of some kind. I just saw that little bow-tied White House Nazi, Carter Bowen, on
Meet the Press
the other day talking about plans to triple the defense budget. They spend money just to find other things to spend money
     on. But other than sharing the same launch platforms, we don’t have much to do with Defense. I’ve been thinking, since I last
     spoke with the military police, that your Miss Escavedo might have been trying to reach me in my capacity as a member of UCS.”
    “Union of Concerned Scientists,” DeLuca said.
    “I’ve given some talks and added my name to some petitions against the weaponization of space,” she said. “And since that’s
     all they do at Space Command, maybe she had something she thought we needed to know. All she would have had to do was Google
     and my name would have come up. Or my husband’s.”
    “What does he do?”
    “I don’t know,” she said. “I was going to say I know what he used to do, but that wouldn’t be true either. My husband was
     a physicist with the Directed Energy Lab at Kirtland. Dr. Gary Burgess. Ph.D. at sixteen. I haven’t seen or heard from him
     in over three years. And he couldn’t talk about his work when we were together, which was part of what…”
    “Part of what what?” DeLuca asked.
    “I was going to say part of what drove him crazy, but I was afraid you’d think of John Forbes Nash, and that wouldn’t be right.”
    “The guy from
A Beautiful Mind
?”
    She nodded.
    “There are no analogies to be drawn,” she said. “Beyond that they were equally brilliant. And lacking in certain social skills.”
    “The letter is addressed to simply ‘Dr. Burgess,’” DeLuca said. “Is it possible that Cheryl Escavedo was trying to contact
     your husband?”
    “It’s possible,” Penelope Burgess said.
    “Would I be able to find him at Kirtland then?” DeLuca asked. “At the Directed Energy Lab?”
    She shook her head.
    “My husband disappeared, Mr. DeLuca,” she said. “Quite intentionally—I didn’t mean to imply foul play. He disappeared himself.”
    It was evident that she didn’t want to talk about it, but the reasons why were less apparent.
    “I don’t want to press,” DeLuca said, “but the problem is that I never know exactly what’s relevant to my investigation and
     what isn’t until I fill my head with more than I need and let it all sift down. I realize this may be personally difficult
     for you…”
    “It’s not as difficult as you might think,” she said. “Our marriage had been over, or all over but the shouting, for a long
     time before he left. And the reasons he left had little to do with me, I think. Do you know who Arthur Bartok was?”
    “I’m afraid I don’t,” DeLuca said.
    “Arthur Bartok was the boy genius of